2011-09-30 - Stark Stalker
The security at Stark Enterprises campus is - like most of their tech - state of the art, or a bit beyond it. They don't generally have a problem, because they tend to pick up soon-to-be problems /before/ they are problems, and head them off. Some of those systems have just reported an 'issue' of concern: One of the researchers in Stark's top secret weapons development division just arrived at the campus, and sensors have detected he was and is being followed by a figure being noticeably sneaky, to the point even the scanners are only getting partial readings. Even more concerning: weapons have been detected, including high-energy weapons, a sword, explosives, and ... a thermite lance. It's not often that Tony brings Jean here. BUt there are ways to be discreet, especially when you're dating a telepath. Unfortunately, then there's that security. "Blast it. We'll have to..." He listens. "Thermite lance? I think...I'm going to have to deal with this." Personally. Wearing one of the fine dresses she can now wear due to being able to afford it, Jean Grey sighs as their evening gets canceled by security concerns. "I suppose it'll be bad form to show up in costume," she remarks quietly. "But I'll have your back regardless, even if I look like I wouldn't want to ruin my nails by clobbering someone..." The security sensors keep basic track of the stalker outside, though they don't have a perfect read. What they do have is enough to know ... somehow, that stalker can tell where the target goes. When he goes up several floors, the stalker immediately starts climbing up. When he goes down two floors to check on a lab, the stalker goes down two floors. Somehow, the stalker can sense or track that employee through the defensive screens and anti-surveillance countermeasures in place. Some degree of intervention definitely seems to be in order. Tony, turning away from Jean and fiddling with his briefcase...until the suit explodes into action around him. "Whoever it is is following one of my people. I'm suspecting it's *likely* industrial espionage, but I'm not sure. Jean, can you read anything?" Jean Grey closes her eyes and muses, reaching out to try and tag the intruder's mind, deftly doing her utter best to ensure she's not discovered or tips off the suspect. "We'll see what's in there..." she murmurs distractedly, although she cracks one eye to watch Tony's techno-transformation, always fascinated by her lover's genius and the tools of his trade. What Jean detects, as she opens her mind to start scanning, is a great deal of psychic noise, coming from the locus of that 'stalker' outside the building. Her guess, right off, is that this is definitely no normal industrial espionage: that stalker is following the Stark employee using telepathy. The mind she finds at the end is shielded quite well, but it is not so deftly. Even the shielding puts out psychic noise in waves, the sort the Professor likely would have noticed even from miles away. Though strong, the shields are not impervious. With Jean's greater skill and training, she could well slip past them, perhaps even undetected. Scanners report back to Iron Man that the stalker has produced an anti-gravity 'hoverbike' and is approaching the main Tower of the Stark Campus, readying those weapons ... "Your intruder is a telepath," Jean murmurs as Tony suits up, casually taking off her high heels so as better to run if necessary. "And she... yes, she... is broadcasting some kind of psychic static or something. It's a bit difficult to get a reading on her. I'll hang out back here and see what I can find out. Give me a shout if you need a telekinetic hand." "Okay." And then the suit is diving for the nearest exit, out into the courtyard and up into the air. There's a...woman on a hoverbike. With weapons. On his turf. Of course, he has to go for the dramatic. "Halt!" Said woman - striking, in purple with gold highlights, yet dark enough to be black when out of direct light - is only a dozen or so feet away from the tower's outer surface when conronted by the armored form of Iron Man. She turns her head to regard him, and a hand lowers to grab something from her waist. Sensors in the armor will identify it as a sonic grenade, a powerful but purely non-lethal weapon. "Don't know who or what you are, tin man." An altered voice emerges, clearly being changed by something within the suit and mask. "But my quarry is in that building. I don't have time for twenty questions." Meanwhile, inside the building said Stark employee uses his authorization to open the Vault, heading inside to check on some of the very important, valuable and dangerous prototypes held by his division. As he is authorized to be there, nothing sounds any alarms. But systems that would not normally be tracking said employee are actively doing so because he has been identified as the woman's target, and they will record as he gathers up three different prototypes from the Vault, before heading back out... With care and effort, Jean Grey is able to start winnowing out a few bits of information. That woman out there is very intent, and quite hostile - but only towards her target. She thinks of him as a 'rider'. Determined, she is willing to fight others, but clearly has non-lethal intent. But she doesn't just intend to catch that 'rider'. She intends to kill him. Kill him, and use the thermite lance to utterly eradicate him. Finding her name is a bit of a challenge, as she isn't thinking of her name just now. Jean Grey switches to telepathy, as it's quieter. Hopefully the other telepath can't listen in. << Whoever it is, she's hostile... but just to the one guy she's tracking... he's dead meat if she gets her hands on him. You want I should sneak into costume and just 'happen' to be on patrol nearby? >> It's his property, he's calling the shots as far as she's concerned. "Apparently, your quarry is robbing my employer. And he can only come back out this way." Behind the visor, Tony narrows his eyes. "I can't let you use that lance here. I can't risk the collateral damage." Not so much to Mr. Stark's property as to Mr. Stark's employees, quite a few of whom tend to work late. "Apparently, your quarry is robbing my employer. And he can only come back out this way." Behind the visor, Tony narrows his eyes. "I can't let you use that lance here. I can't risk the collateral damage." Not so much to Mr. Stark's property as to Mr. Stark's employees, quite a few of whom tend to work late. To Jean, << Might not be a bad idea. Given we have a guy acting in an out of character manner I'm thinking mind control is going on here. And this girl knows something. >> The costumed woman looks Iron Man up and down. Her face is covered, so there's no way to see the sneer that her body language says is there. "So, you want me to /let/ my quarry escape the confines of the building, where it would be child's play to nab and finish him. And let him escape that building with the weapons he is stealing from your employer. And then you want to tell me I cannot use the lance to destroy him? Tin man, you have a lot to learn." There it is. The sneer is definitely in her voice. In truth, she's just making sure to put out the same kind of confidence her old teammates would have done in the face of this. Hopefully it will work. Inside the building, the Stark employee in question finishes gathering the third of three prototypes, and is working on closing up the crate now holding all three, and discs of research notes and materials. It's a haul potentially worth millions, even billions of dollars, if he gets away with this. But how is he going to get this past security? << Copy that. >> Checking first to ensure that no one nearby is aware of her position, Jean slips into an alcove and swiftly changes into suitable attire for a fight, leaving her obviously-large purse and her dancing attire behind. Phoenix flies up and around the building to hide her original path, letting her fiery aura become visible once she's on a good vector back in, her angle of descent making it seem as if she came from somewhere completely different. Which she did. "Well, hello there, shellhead," she remarks conversationally, pointedly ignoring the sneer she caught at the tail end of Voodoo's words. "Caught a trespasser?" "I'm not going to let him get away." Iron Man is equally confident. He's also shifting his position. For the most part, he is not covering Voodoo. He's covering the entrance. "But unlike that toy of yours, my weapons won't take out half the building. Phoenix. Apparently, one of Mr. Stark's employees has gone bad and is trying to abscond with prototypes. The lady here just wants to stop him. Unfortunately..." << She doesn't seem to care about collateral damage, does she. >> "Lady? Seriously, Tin Man?" Voodoo comments snarkily. She reverses the hoverbike when suddenly she and the armored figure are no longer alone in the sky. "I don't need the two of you ganging up on me. Back off! I don't give a damn about this idiot's boss's toys. What I care about is stopping that filthy scum from delivering them to his friends. And making sure I get enough out of him to find his friends and take them out too." In point of fact, she cares about collateral damage. But she honestly feels that the best tactical solution is to attack the target when his avenues of escape are limited and tightly confining. "Damned morons defending a rider 'cause you don't know the difference." she snarks, bitchily, before dropping preciptiously, cutting the anti-gravity on her hoverbike and pushing it towards the front entrance of the building. Inside, the Stark employee in question has lugged the crate - far too big, bulky and heavy for his human frame to have carried so easily or so quickly - down the stairs to the ground level, apparently managing to make it into a fire escape stairwell from the corridor near the labs and Vault without tripping the alarms. Then cannisters come rolling out into the corridor, spewing billowing grey-white smoke, while two others start sending out shrieking, screaming sonic waves that knock the guards unconscious within seconds, even as the smoke blinds cameras and most other sensors. Elsewhere in the parking lot, a vehicle's engine starts. Jean Grey arches a brow under her mask. << And people bitch about mutants going all vigilante? >> she queries of Iron Man privately, letting out a soft sigh, even as she flies into action. << Whoever she's after, they're trying to bug out. I've got 'em tagged. >> And she gives her partner the exact coordinates where the employee's at. << Something isn't right, Tony... that mind... I think your employee's possessed by... something, not sure what. >> And she closes her eyes, focusing on that mind, working on trying to find out who or what's riding shotgun on it, looking for ways and means to nail it into unconsciousness. << Think I heard a getaway car firing up too. >> << Possession? Can you get it out of him. >> And then...that happens, and Iron Man's abruptly in motion. He doesn't block Voodoo...but he's certainly flanking her. Especially as she just said she wasn't going to kill the guy. For right now, he can work with her...at least while Jean works her magic. He hopes. He isn't aware, of course, that Voodoo is *far* better at un-possessing people. Voodoo almost suicidally maintains the accelleration of falling, only cutting on the anti-gravity at the last few moments before impact, enough to cut and bleed off most of the momentum, but not all of it. Thankfully, it seems that bike is pretty resilient, and she dives off of it, rolling even before it impacts. She comes up and raises a hand - empty, other than the glove on it - extending it outward. Phoenix will be able to clearly make out the thunderous explosion of psionic power as it ripples out from the other woman's mind, slamming into the mind of that employee, or rather the very alien *thing* inside him, running the show. He staggers back, growling audibly, and then charges forward even as tires squeal, and a heavy passenger truck roars up along a driveway and turns, heading right for Voodoo, the bike, and anything else in the way at the front of the building. Quite well aware of the onrushing doom, the purple-clad psion doesn't flinch or back away. Instead, she reaches to her waist, grabs something and throws it towards the truck. The small object bounces, then a hum sounds and it magnetically latches onto the undercarriage. As soon as it makes contact, it explodes upwards, tearing through the engine block straight up. Messy, but efficient. And the driver is alive, so far. Before Phoenix has a chance to do more than realize the oncoming truck is indeed oncoming, it's neutralized. The redhead shifts her attention to the massive psionic wallop the other psionic lady just dealt to the employee. << Whatever it is... it's not human inside there anymore. And it's pissed about something. >> After the warning to the owner of the premises, she opens up with her own psi-bolt, wary of angering something that can fry her brain, much like the last time she fought an unknown alien or demonic mind. << Probably not a good idea, this, >> she mutters guardedly to Tony while she does so. << I keep getting my butt handed to me. >> << Well, I can't help telepathically >> He can, though, ignore such things as sonic attacks. The suit's good for things like that, and he's heading in after the guy physically, pretty much through assorted bits of truck debris. The woman's good, even if she doesn't want to admit to being a lady. Phoenix can muster about as much psionic force as Voodoo, though her strikes aren't nearly as noisy. In short, not nearly as much wasted energy. She may be powerful, but the other woman is ... sloppy. Not inaccurate: she hits what she aims for, accomplishes what she intends. But she throws twice the energy for the same effect, sometimes moreso. Phoenix's strike is almost surgical in its precision by comparison, and the creature - whatever it is - stumbles back and collapses again. But it is struggling back upwards all too soon, and reaching for that crate as Iron Man comes through the sonic waves of the grenades keeping his guards unconscious, into the billowing smoke that is rendering cameras and motion detectors useless. Multispectral scanners allow the armored hero to still spot the target, and the highly destructive weapon coming out of that crate. That's bad. Voodoo snarls as she feels that psionic bolt lash out at her target. "Damnit!" she screeches in annoyance. She turns, drawing her blade in a swift and graceful motion, and engages the guy coming out of the truck, parrying the first two blows and then delivering a sharp side kick into his midsection to drive him back. "You don't know what you're dealing with!" she screams, as she lays into the former driver with a vengeance. Phoenix ignores the anger directed at her, she's far too busy dealing with the gruesome thing that commandeered one of Tony's employees, a reckoning that will be dealt with later. Instead, she tries another salvo of her psionic bolts, because if she can keep the baddie down long enough, Iron Man can take its head off. Proverbially speaking, of course, since it's wearing the skin of one of his people, and they don't yet know if the poor possessed employee has a chance of survival yet. She's doubtful. However, she can be as ruthless as others when she needs to be, dealing with the immediate threat in her own inimitable fashion. Fortunately, the suit is well designed for non-lethal combat. Repulsor blasts, carefully modulated, lashing out right as he reaches for the weapon. Iron Man has to be exceptionally careful. He doesn't want to blow that thing up. Whether or not the man can be saved, he's also trying not to kill him. They can establish that later. Hammered psionically, the creature masquerading as Tony's employee is in no condition immediately to resist or avoid the repulsor blasts that disarm it, sending the very powerful weapon skittering away. Of course, there are two more to choose from, if it can get to them, and it is trying, seeming to grow inured to the pain of the psionic blasts, pushing through them to keep moving, if not well or gracefully. The blade-wielding psion in purple starts spewing a line of invective in multiple languages. One or two of them don't even sound human. And frankly, they all sound like curse words. Angry, angry curse words. The martial arts fight is swift and brutal. But she finishes it off with another psionic blast, the noise almost 'deafening' as she hammers the driver down pretty much into a short-term coma. Then she turns and starts stalking towards the front entrance again. << Incoming, >> Phoenix warns Iron Man with an image of the strange woman with the sailor's tongue, even as she realizes that her target is getting less and less of a headache from her psionic mindbursts. Even so, she chooses to help with keeping the weaponry out of the hands of the mind-fragged employee, switching from a telepathic attack to a telekinetic sweeping of the weapons, trying to grab hold of them (carefully) and remove them from the field of play. Preferably somewhere safe so their secrets aren't just handed out to those not authorized to know them. And then two more repulsor blasts. These aren't aimed at the man...but at the sources of that sonic disturbance. After all, Iron Man is protected. The girls aren't, and it would be nice if they could get in here. He's got pretty good targeting assist. He *should* be able to do it. The sonic grenades aren't exactly shielded, so they pop, fizzle, and smoke once hit with the repulsor blasts. That, and they stop putting out those mind-numbing screeches. Isn't that nice? The telekinetic effort from Phoenix sweeps the weapons out of range of the crawling creature still masqueratding as a Stark employee, leaving the crawling figure, staggering under those continued psionic blasts, to crawl for the exit instead. Crawling towards the exit, however, brings the target right towards the approaching purple boots of Voodoo, who stomps through the entrance and crouches down, laying a hand forcefully on the back of his neck. "Stay back!" she shouts towards the others, what sounds like a warning. And then? Then she unleashes a torrent of psionic energy that feels like a live hot lead to the damned core of the Astral. It's a Hell of a lot more powerful than anything she has pulled out yet. It shapes into a shepherd's crook and reaches down into that employee, wrapping around that alien presence, and starts a tug of war. She's putting out so much power she's glowing /visibly/, a crackling purple aura connecting her and her target. Jean Grey does a bit of housecleaning, repackaging the pilfered prototypes nice and neatly and with enough covering up any potential shapes or details that hopefully anyone who doesn't need to know what they are doesn't find out. And then she turns to find... Again a brow arches under the cloth of her costume. Her mindvoice is hushed, or much like trying to shout over a windstorm. << She's putting out a massive amount of psionic energy... >> Herself, she's simply fishing for signs that the original owner of that body might still be alive, mentally listening and seeking for that other, more human voice. << Yeah. If *I* can tell. >> Tony, pretty much headblind. For now, as Jean removes the prototypes, he moves to park the suit between them and the guy, just in case he breaks free from Voodoo and goes for them again. What manifests next? Ew. Definitely ew. Voodoo keeps pumping out the amps of psionic energy, wrapping it around that alien presence inside the guy and pulling, hauling upward, outward. The human body screams in agony, and she tosses it over onto it's back and keeps pulling, until finally within that visible purple energy there forms a creepy, alien humanoid creature, something like a very muscular skekzeez from the Dark Crystal movie. Voodoo keeps pulling, until finally she pulls the entire creature up and out of the human body, and it collapses, scream cut off, gone quiet. Buried deep inside, the tiny spark of a human life struggles to arise and reclaim the body. It's weak, but it has a chance, now. Voodoo seizes the Daemonite in hand and throws it to the ground. "Get him clear, now!" she screams, as she pulls that really scary thermite lance from her back, smacking the back end on the floor to ignite it, then turning its ferocious chemically-supercharged flame on the Daemonite. The scream? Makes those sonic grenades sound like party favors. A telekinetic 'yoink!' is good enough to get the wounded employee out of harm's way, even as Phoenix tosses up her strongest TK shield, her aura bright and fiery in the strength of her mental abilities. Thermite baaaaaad. And of course, she's ensured that Iron Man himself is within the radius of her shield as well, because she's unaware of any shielding technology his suit might have, and she'll be damned if she'll risk his life with a blast of unknown scale. Iron Man...would probably have stopped her if he'd been able to react. Maybe. That thing...sure ain't human. But it's also probably sentient, and he DOES have strong ethics. Too late, though. "What *is* that?" is all he ends up saying. No lie, the thermite lance is scary, scary stuff. Voodoo won't argue that. She doesn't even try. But she uses it, swiftly, brutally, efficiently. In less than a minute, the Daemonite is completely gone, utterly smoked. So too is a piece of the floor of the building, completely slagged to molten ruin. But she considers that a damned small price to pay, frankly. Voodoo pullls a small cord on the side of the lance and the cap snaps on, snuffing out the flames as it is itself slagged to molten and fills the top of the lance, sealing it off from the oxygen it demands. "It's a Daemonite rider. It possessed that guy, probably a few days ago. I spotted it earlier, and followed it. I caught enough to know it was planning something, so I watche and waited. I wanted to follow it back to its lair. But when I realized what it was after, I didn't have a choice. I had to take it out, or risk the Daemonites getting 'hold of that damned weapons tech. Like your crazy suit, tin man." Jean Grey slides her gaze over to Iron Man, slowly releasing her TK shield, kneeling to check on the fallen employee, her mind ever so gently brushing against his to determine his general wellbeing and trying to assess if he needs medical or psychiatric help and how swiftly. She leaves the suggestions about better warnings to property owners to Iron Man, since she's only his lady friend and not anyone of any authority hereabouts. "You could have contacted Mr. Stark," Iron Man notes. "Rather than sneaking in and having people think you were the bad guy." Of course...like Voodoo would actually do that. Voodoo looks at Iron Man and shakes her head. "Like anyone would believe me? C'mon! They can't be detected, except with my talent. Though I suspect firelady over there is a powerful enough psion that she can feel they're wrong, just not what they are. This is the only way it works. They way they trained me. Find them, track them, hunt them, and eliminate them, dismantling whatever powerbases they try to build. It only works underground. They take over power structures. They get the cattle working for them, securing and protecting them." Wow. Cynical much? She's got a huge persecution complex. But is it really innaccurate? Or just depressing? "That guy is going to need medical attention. His body is ravaged and weak. Fluids, fortified. And he'll probably have nightmares and phobias. Depending on how long he was possesed, it will be worse. But he should survive. He's alive, separate." Voodoo just shrugs her shoulders. "To the authorities, I /am/ the bad guy. That's just the way it works." Phoenix nods and shrugs at the commentary regarding her abilities. Instead, given the information regarding the poor employee, the compassionate firelady instead chooses to provide ambulance service. "Be back in a few." Once more igniting her telekinetic aura, mostly for show at this point than anything else, she carefully lifts the injured man and flies out at top speed to the nearest excellent (and discreet) medical establishment. There, she uses her public identity and some casual telepathic illusions to get the man admitted, his family contacted, and information about his injuries and needs passed on with a minimum of fuss and suspicion. It takes awhile until she eventually returns. Lord only knows what she'll find when she gets back.